13 July 2010

Feeling Safe in Israel

Recently the commander of the Northern Command of the I.D.F. presented the IDF's program for countering the Hezbollah threat: warning civilian populations in accordance with international law and giving them time to leave the war zone, followed by a broad, massive attack on Hezbollah targets together with precision targeting of the organization's rocket and missile launch sites. At the same time, we can assume that Israel's enemies have come to believe that Israel's rear-echelon military bases and the civilian population are the weak point that balances out Israel’s military superiority.

Besides expecting more of the same in the coming years, what else can we learn from this current scenario of mutual deterrence?. In years past when Israel military doctrine was based on conducting the battle far away from Israel’s civilian centers, we can now assume that in the future the civilian population of Israel living in the greater Tel-Aviv will have to be evacuated to Judea and Samaria. Who would have thought that the settlement communities of Judea and Samaria would become a “safe haven” for central Israel.

With friends like these……..

During an interview this past Wednesday during the Netanyahu visit at the White House, President Obama when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that "some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion."

"Ironically, I've got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate," Obama said.

I am surprised that he didn’t remind us that some of his best friends are Jews, ………..or maybe he did. The big question mark is if President Obama will continue to be so “forthcoming” after November 4.

Midnight Express

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's description of the Israeli raid on the activists' boat as "an attack on the conscience of humanity" which "deserves every kind of curse," and as a "turning point in history" after which "nothing will be the same," sounds like the typical Islamic paranoid thinking that afflicts many Arab leaders in the world.

Despite his accusations, Israel has never done anything comparable for example to the late Syrian leader Hafez Assad's 1982 massacre of more than 20,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama. Fellow Muslims are still murdering far more Muslims than by Israelis, or indeed by Americans. And if one thinks of the death toll wreaked by the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo - more than 4 million - talking of turning points in history, after the killing of nine people, sounds not only absurd but an indication of how far the Turkish political leadership is ready to lead their nation backward and erase 60 years of modernization.

But none of that seems to count as much as what Israel is allegedly accused of committing.After all, when it comes to Muslims or Africans some might say (and many more might think), what can one expect from savages? They don't know any better.